How's It Going In Afghanistan?...None of Your Business

[Origanalist]

http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/hows-it-going-in-afghanistannone-of-your-business

10/31/2017

http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/uploads/2/7/6/1/27619303/afghan_orig.jpg

By Liberty Report Staff

We all know that the American Empire's longest war of 16 years in Afghanistan is a total failure. The lives lost can never return. The Trillion dollars (with a "T") spent can never go back into our pockets. But U.S. Presidents never like to admit defeat, so the war is passed from one administration to the next with the hope that taxpayers will just accept it as a fact of life.

The Empire doesn't even want to pretend that success in Afghanistan is measurable anymore. The Pentagon has announced that 'Progress Metrics' of Afghan Army size are now classified.

American taxpayers need only to pay up...and shut up.

Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com reports:
For the last 16 years, the Pentagon’s “progress” in the occupation of Afghanistan has been measured by officials through multiple different statistics, and one most often cited has been the size of the Afghan military. Those numbers have struggled recently, with Afghanistan not recruiting well nor retaining its recruits. So that’s not a metric anymore.

At least not as far as the public narrative is concerned.

continued..http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/hows-it-going-in-afghanistannone-of-your-business

[Suzanimal]

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko, regularly critical of secrecy in Afghanistan, noted that “The Afghans know what’s going on, the Taliban knows what’s going on, the US military knows what’s going on. The only people who don’t know what’s going on are the people paying for it.”

When Pentagon officials later said that the decision to keep the numbers secret was at the behest of unnamed Afghan officials, Sopko shot back “the government usually doesn’t classify good news. I don’t want any nameless, faceless Afghan bureaucrat telling the American taxpayer what they ought to know.”

SMDH :mad:

[Suzanimal]

@ 17:40

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?516414-How-s-It-Going-In-Afghanistan-None-of-Your-Business

They do view us as the enemy.

@18:28


The Rise of MEK/NCRI in Washington: Pay Off The Right People and You Are No Longer A Terrorist

...
The tale of the rehabilitation and rise of MEK/NCRI is a subset of the ongoing corruption of America’s political culture, best illustrated by the fact that even national security is now up for sale, enabling a terrorist group to transform itself into a “resistance movement” and eventually be labeled “freedom fighters.”

How did this happen as MEK was on the State Department roster of foreign terrorist organizations since the list was established in 1997? Its inclusion derived from its having killed six Americans in the 1970s, its participation in the U.S. Embassy hostage-taking and from its record of extreme violence both inside and outside Iran since that time. When I was a CIA trainee our course included a simulation of the horrific attack on US Air Force Officers in Tehran in 1973 that killed two colonels.

MEK is widely regarded as a terrorist cult headed by a bizarre husband and wife team Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. Its members are required to be celibate and are subjected to extensive brainwashing, physical torture, severe beatings even unto death, and prolonged solitary confinement if they question the leadership. One scholar who has studied them describes their beliefs as a “weird combination of Marxism and Islamic fundamentalism.”

...

Because MEK/NCRI is a resource being used by Tel Aviv in its clandestine war against Iran, it is perhaps inevitable that many friends of Israel in the United States actively campaigned to have the group removed from the terrorism list so that it could, ironically, have a free hand to continue to terrorize Iran. Indeed, neocons at their various think tanks and publications as well as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee all recommended delisting the group and continue to support it. Prominent American Jews to include Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz have been advocates for the group in spite of its record of terrorism.

Multi-million dollar contracts with Washington lobbying firms experienced at “working” congress backed up by handsome speaking fees have induced many prominent Americans to join the chorus supporting NCRI. Prior to 2012, speaking fees for the group started at $15,000 and went up from there. Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell reported more than $150,000 in honoraria. Rudy Giuliani has been paid generously for years at $20,000 per appearance for brief, twenty-minute speeches. Bear in mind that MEK was a listed terrorist group at the time and accepting money from it to promote its interests should have constituted material support of terrorism.

The group’s well-connected friends have included prominent neocons like John Bolton and ex-CIA Directors James Woolsey, Michael Hayden and Porter Goss as well as former Generals Anthony Zinni, Peter Pace, Wesley Clark, and Hugh Shelton. Traditional conservatives close to the Trump Administration like Newt Gingrich, Fran Townsend and Elaine Chao are also fans of NCRI. Townsend in particular, as a national security specialist, has appeared on television to denounce Iran, calling its actions “acts of war” without indicating that she has received money from an opposition group.

The emergence of NCRI at this time is just another fool’s game with the usual Washington crowd queuing up for a bad cause because they are both lining their pockets and thinking they are helping Israel by punishing Iran. In any event it is a poor bargain for the rest of us, but that hardly seems to matter anymore.
...

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/october/30/the-rise-of-mekncri-in-washington-pay-off-the-right-people-and-you-are-no-longer-a-terrorist/

[Suzanimal]

wrong thread :o

[shakey1]

"Gimme an F!..."

http://img.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/55/05/89/20150626/ob_ac33eb_contry-joe-mcdonald.jpg

"... and it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for
don't ask, I don't give a damn, next stop's Afghanistan..."

[enhanced_deficit]

Yes, nun ov aur bidness.

"Just Say No" Trump offers Plan for Opioid Crisis (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?516310-quot-Just-Say-No-quot-Trump-offers-Plan-for-Opioid-Crisis&p=6544529&viewfull=1#post6544529)

[AZJoe]

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko (http://news.antiwar.com/2017/10/30/pentagon-to-keep-afghan-war-progress-metrics-secret/), “the government usually doesn’t classify good news. I don’t want any nameless, faceless Afghan bureaucrat telling the American taxpayer what they ought to know.”

[enhanced_deficit]

Is this war progress censorship initiative taken because otherwise data could show that things got worse with Trump's "new and improved" strategy/dropping of MOAB to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afhanistan?

Afghan War Data, Once Public, Is Censored in U.S. Military Report
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff


Oct. 30, 2017
WASHINGTON — The American military command in Afghanistan has decided to keep secret key figures related to the growth and progress of local security forces, redacting the numbers at the behest of Afghan officials from the latest report by the government’s watchdog for spending.
The move clouds measures of progress for the Afghan security forces, the primary benefactor of the $120 billion that the United States has spent on reconstruction since the start of the war and the linchpin of President Trump’s new strategy in Afghanistan. Backed by the American military and its NATO allies, the Afghans are responsible for turning the tide of the war against the Taliban in the coming years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/asia/afghanistan-war-redacted-report.html

[Origanalist]

Is this war progress censorship initiative taken because otherwise data could show that things got worse with Trump's "new and improved" strategy/dropping of MOAB to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afhanistan?

Afghan War Data, Once Public, Is Censored in U.S. Military Report
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff


Oct. 30, 2017
WASHINGTON — The American military command in Afghanistan has decided to keep secret key figures related to the growth and progress of local security forces, redacting the numbers at the behest of Afghan officials from the latest report by the government’s watchdog for spending.
The move clouds measures of progress for the Afghan security forces, the primary benefactor of the $120 billion that the United States has spent on reconstruction since the start of the war and the linchpin of President Trump’s new strategy in Afghanistan. Backed by the American military and its NATO allies, the Afghans are responsible for turning the tide of the war against the Taliban in the coming years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/asia/afghanistan-war-redacted-report.html

This is all heading in the wrong direction. More intervention, more civilian casualties, more build up of the military industrial complex. While he throws a few bones to the republican faithful the things that really matter are getting worse. Namely the police state and military interventionism.

[enhanced_deficit]

This is all heading in the wrong direction. More intervention, more civilian casualties, more build up of the military industrial complex. While he throws a few bones to the republican faithful the things that really matter are getting worse. Namely the police state and military interventionism.

Some of the coverage has started to turn very anti-war:

Time to Admit the Afghan War is ‘Nonsense’

February 22, 2018

Exclusive: Officially, the U.S. military objective in Afghanistan is to force the Taliban to the negotiating table, but just last month President Trump said that talks with the Taliban are off the table, indicating an incoherent policy, as Jonathan Marshall notes.
By Jonathan Marshall
Whatever happened to the Donald Trump who tweeted (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/289807790178959360) in 2013, “Let’s get out of Afghanistan … we waste billions there. Nonsense!”
Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilots fly near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 5, 2017. The pilots are assigned to the 7th Infantry Division’s Task Force, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade.The unit is preparing to support Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and Resolute Support. (Army photo by Capt. Brian Harris)

And whatever happened to the reality TV star who used to tell under-performers, “you’re fired”?
Today, as commander in chief, President Trump is indefinitely extending the Afghan war’s record as the longest in U.S. history. He’s wasting $45 billion (http://thehill.com/policy/defense/372641-pentagon-war-in-afghanistan-will-cost-45-billion-in-2018) to wage it this year alone. And he’s not even thinking of firing his huckster generals who claim that sending a few thousand more troops and stepping up the bombing will be a “game changer (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-new-us-air-blitz-in-afghanistan-isnt-stopping-for-winter-but-will-it-stop-the-taliban/2018/01/16/c9bb874c-f4cd-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html).”
Much like the Vietnam War, every day’s news of war from Afghanistan puts the lie to optimistic claims of a military solution. A recent BBC study (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42863116) concluded that Taliban forces are now active in 70 percent of the country, more than at any time since the end of 2001. Unofficial U.S. estimates of their strength (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/numbers-afghanistan-are-not-good-n842651) have soared from about 20,000 in 2014 to at least 60,000 today.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/22/time-to-admit-the-afghan-war-is-nonsense/